


Hypothermia Isn't a Joke

by thekookster



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Coming Out, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, M/M, Meddling, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5809834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekookster/pseuds/thekookster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Eggsy are stranded on a snowy mountainside in a secluded cottage after a mission goes sideways. It's a lot less stressful that Eggsy thought it would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hypothermia Isn't a Joke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BouncyBrittonie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BouncyBrittonie/gifts).



> Alright, I have to admit that I don't usually write fluff. I hope that you like it anyway, because I really had a lot of fun writing it and your prompts were great!

"Have you gotten the blankets yet?" Harry asks for the fourth time. 

"A minute," Eggsy yells back half-heartedly. He's rummaging in the closet of the bedroom, feeling out the textures of the cloths stacked up in the small, dark space. Rougher texture, probably a towel, then softer but thin: a set of sheets, then— ah. Finally.

"Got 'em!" Eggsy finally yells, yanking the thick down blankets from the closet. When he gets back to Harry, retracing his previous route in the dark, the latter is still squinting into the power box. By the dim moonlight shining in through the slim windows, it isn't hard to make out the silhouette of him— still wearing his thick coat until they get the power going and the heaters working. 

"Any progress?" Eggsy asks while putting the blankets down. 

"I've figured out the circuiting, but it sadly isn't doing much," Harry replies. "I'll figure out how to wire us to the backup supply, but for now it might be wise to find some candles and other, more old-fashioned light sources."

"On it," Eggsy nods, wandering into the kitchen in search of their equipment. He finds an old lighter and a half-empty box of matches in a kitchen drawer. More importantly, he discovers some firewood in one of the kitchen closets. He gathers up his findings and carries them over to the small fireplace in the living room of the cabin, watching Harry on the opposite side of the room.

“If I could rewire the battery of one of our glasses, this would be far more expedient,” Harry mutters, "but with one pair lost and the other damaged, there isn’t a fast way to fix this, I’m afraid. In either case, it’s far more sensible to continue this in the morning. I’ll have better light, then, and we don't have to worry about our pursuers, since they were most certainly buried in the avalanche.”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” Eggsy nods. “The fire’s gettin’ somewhere too, so it’ll be warm in here in a little bit.”

“Very well, then, I’ll check if there’s any running water available.”

Eggsy hears Harry retreating into the bathroom and sighs, holding his cracked watch face up against the moonlight. “Merlin, guv, I swear to all the fucking gods,” he mutters, looking at the watch dubiously, “there better not be a mic in here that we don’t know about, and you better be getting us out of here fast.”

* * *

As it turns out, there is a tub with a working tap in the bathroom. By some miracle, it still works, so that they’ll be able to wash up and use it as sustainable drinking water. Eggsy ends up finding some old tinned food that someone obviously stocked up on for these kind of situations. With the question of immediate food and supplies settled, they go about setting up sleeping arrangements. They end up dragging the mattress from the bedroom out into the living room in order to stay as close to the heat of the fireplace as possible. Better not to risk hypothermia when there’s no functional heating available. They bundle up with all the blankets and sheets they can find and discard the suit jackets, keeping on the rest of the suits since layers preserve body heat. The fireplace does end up heating up the room quite a bit, so they check that the grate is stable and keep it burning. 

Eggsy falls asleep looking at the yellow lights flickering across the tired lines of Harry’s face.

* * *

Here's the problem, right: he really likes Harry. And that ain't a problem, as such, but the fact that he doesn't want to touch him is. Or not, exactly, touch, or even intimacy, it's mostly—

Mostly the sex, really.

Eggsy doesn't like sex. Never wanted it, or seen the point. It always made more sense to do it for the intimacy than for the physical aspect of it. He's just never really been into fucking around. And yeah, bright young thing with a libido he is; bright young thing with sexual attraction he isn't. Sure, he likes getting off on his own, even sometimes likes getting off to thinking about and seeing other people get off, depending on the circumstance. But he doesn't like being touched, the whole thing just doesn’t _do_ anything for him. It's just a totally different thing, not always easy to explain— 

Anyway. People don't always get that, the not wanting to be touched thing, and Harry... he likes Harry, it’s even kind of embarrassing how much he likes him, but a posh proper traditional bloke like Harry— no way would he understand that. 

And now he's stuck in a cottage with Harry for days on end with hardly any electricity.

Fuck his entire life.

* * *

 The next day, Harry gets back to working on the electricity while Eggsy does an inventory of all the supplies he can find by the light of day. He ends up finding some candles, which will definitely come in handy at night, and some more tinned food. Once he’s done with that, he bundles up and goes outside to see if there’s another cottage or a shed of some kind nearby where they can gather more supplies. After an hour of luckless searching, he decides to trudge back through the snow to the cottage to warm back up. Harry has, courteously enough, boiled a pot of water over the fireplace with the help of an oven grate from the kitchen, and with some colder water from the tap, the bath ends up being just about lukewarm. Eggsy slips into his bath and relaxes back against the porcelain, lulled into a sense of calm by the quiet tinkering sounds that Harry is making in the other room.

It’s actually quite pleasant to just lie back and enjoy a quiet moment, for once. Eggsy loves his job and wouldn’t trade it for the world, and he doesn’t normally like extended periods of silence and inaction, but this stolen moment in a cottage in the middle of nowhere is just right, slipping into his turbulent life just when he needs it. Closing his eyes, Eggsy lets out a quiet sigh. He absently thinks of how nice it would be to just be able to relax against a solid, warm chest right now, preferably belonging to the man just outside the door. Just to be held by those capable arms, to enjoy Harry’s company and luxuriate in his affection… 

He shouldn’t allow himself to indulge in daydreams like that. It’ll just make the eventual reality so much harder to stomach.

Sighing, Eggsy heaves himself out of the bath.

* * *

That evening, they share a tin of soup in front of the fireplace. Harry dutifully updates Eggsy on his progress on the circuitry. He’ll probably be able to restore electricity to the cottage the following day, and if nothing else, they’ll be able to send some morse code to the nearest mountain rescue and reach Kingsman that way. Unfortunately, the part of Harry’s glasses that was broken contained the comms, so that reaching the next mountain rescue seems like the most viable course of action at this point. Eggsy really needs to talk to Merlin about shielding the communication compartment of the glasses more effectively.

As they get ready to lie back down for sleep, Eggsy can’t repress a shiver at seeing Harry in the dim glow of the fireplace, his top two buttons undone. He’s struck by the beauty in Harry’s face: Harry’s intelligent, piercing eyes, the flutter of his eyelashes. The elegant slope of his nose, and the stern set of his mouth that can lift into a pleased smile at a moment’s notice.

“Are you cold?” Harry asks suddenly.

“What?” Eggsy asks. “No, ‘course not.”

“There’s no need for any false pretences, Eggsy. I did catch that shiver. It’s only natural to still feel a bit chilly after having been outside in these temperatures for such an amount of time. However, it would be most unwise to ignore these symptoms. After all, we do need to get both of us back to headquarters alive.”

And before Eggsy can quite figure out what’s going on, Harry has slipped under the blankets and pulled Eggsy up against himself, encircling him in his arms. Eggsy’s face is up against Harry’s shoulder, his breath puffing out against his neck, his hands hesitantly resting on Harry’s ribs. Their legs are entangled, and Eggsy can feel Harry’s heartbeat thudding along right next to his own racing one.

“Harry? I’m really not in danger of freezing to death,” Eggsy hesitantly murmurs into Harry’s shoulder.

“Hypothermia is no joking matter,” Harry mutters against the shell of Eggsy ear.

“Wasn’t no joke,” Eggsy shoots back, but it’s half-hearted. He’s too caught up in how warm and strong Harry is, surprisingly firm against his own body. He almost discourages himself from nuzzling into Harry’s shoulder, but then it occurs to him that really, the excuse of hypothermia only comes around every so often, and he’s not about to go fighting Harry off with a stick if he gets a cuddle out of it.

“I’m not about to let you die just because you were too stubborn to allow me to provide you with some comfort. Don’t be absurd."

“Wha’?” Eggsy slurs out against Harry’s shoulder, distracted by to heat and comfort of Harry. “Right, 'pothermia.” 

And then they’re just lying there, entangled, breathing each other in in slow, even breaths.

“Besides,” Harry whispers just as Eggsy is on the edge of drifting off, “I’m far too selfish to let you go now.”

And then Eggsy slips into sleep.

* * *

He’s feeling snug and happy when he wakes up. There’s a warm body entangled with his, and he immediately cuddles in closer, sighing contentedly. Instinctively, he moves his searching mouth up against warm, soft skin for a good morning peck, which is sleepily reciprocated after a few seconds. There’s a leisurely moment where it’s just a warm, wonderful mouth against his own, and then he inches back a bit and groggily opens his eyes to find a pair of beautiful brown eyes staring straight back at him.

Harry’s beautiful brown eyes.

“Um,” Eggsy grumbles intelligently.

“Yes, that was quite pleasant,” Harry replies.

“I…?”

“Indeed. If you don’t mind, I’d like to repeat that.”

“Um,” Eggsy says again, clearly overwhelmed by the circumstances.

Harry, obviously aware of the blundering pile of incompetence that Eggsy is at this point, takes matters into his own hands and proceeds to lower his mouth to Eggsy’s again. At this point, Eggsy’s brain catches up to the fact that this is, in fact, a fantastic outcome, and that kissing back is a good decision.

Which works wonderfully for the next few minutes of snogging, until Harry hitches his leg up a little higher and grinds down against Eggsy, at which point Eggsy’s brain remembers that, _oh right_ , there was a good reason for not doing this, namely that Harry is most probably allosexual, and probably does not even know what not having sexual interests means.

“Um,” Eggsy breathes out, voice embarrassingly breathy.

“Yes, you’ve said that already,” Harry interjects amusedly.

“Harry.”

“Eggsy. I see that you’ve regained some measure of speech.”

“Yes. I mean, Harry. I mean, uh…”

“That’s quite the compliment, making my name synonymous with yes.”

“I’m not sexual.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, I don’t,” Eggsy tries, “I just like emotional expressions of affection more than purely physical ones.”

“… I see.”

“So I’m not really into sex very much, sometimes it’s alright when I care about the person and it makes them happy but I just don’t need it for myself,” Eggsy babbles, “and I know, that’s not exactly standard, but that’s just kind of how I am. And it’s not like I’ve just had selfish partners or anything like that! I mean, Terry was a decent shag I suppose– “

“Eggsy.”

“– It just wasn’t really my sort of thing, yeah? And I’ve tried it a bunch of times, it’s just– “

“ _Eggsy._ ”

“– That it only really ever _matters_ , and does any good, when I properly like the person and I’m tits over arse in love with them, and–“

“Eggsy!”

“… What?”

“It’s quite alright, I do know what the asexual spectrum is,” Harry says, cocking an amused eyebrow down at the younger agent.

“… You do?” 

“Of course. A Kingsman agent is always aware of all the current happenings in the world, which applies as much to terrorist sects and new legislatures in remote countries as it does to the latest advances in nanotechnology or the latest human rights issue. In this case, it also includes being aware of the ever-increasing number of research done into human sexuality. I am aware that asexuality is a valid sexual orientation, I’m not quite that antiquated yet.”

“Oh,” Eggsy replies simply.

“Yes.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“Being well past my youthful days, I can't say that it’s not a relief that I won’t have to worry about you leaving me for someone who is far more sexually active,” Harry says wryly, “And it’s quite comforting that you’re not just using me for my body.”

Eggsy can’t suppress a snort at that.

“Besides…” Harry says, staring into Eggsy’s eyes a little more seriously, “I am terribly fond of you, and I’m quite sure that I’d still be ‘tits over arse in love with you’ even if you suddenly professed a love for taxidermy.”

Eggsy can’t help but outright laugh at that, the sound bubbling up from that wonderful warm melty feeling that’s settled in his chest. “Pretty sure that one’s all you, mate.”

“Exactly,” Harry murmurs as he bends back down to press his lips against Eggsy’s, “Can’t have both of us obsessed with stuffing dead animals, it’s an awful hobby to have for one person already.”

It takes a good half hour for Eggsy to stop laughing for long enough so that Harry can kiss him properly.

* * *

The sun is just about rising when Merlin and Lancelot observe the plane taxiing toward its final position on the private airstrip. 

“So,” she begins, “are you going to admit that Eggsy’s watch was that prototype with the backup microphone and comm system?”

“Allegedly,” Merlin reminds her absentmindedly, “and I’ll admit no such thing.”

“You could have had them rescued after the first six hours.”

“You could have hacked the alleged prototype to find their location and flown the helicopter yourself.”

“Well, that would’ve been counterproductive to sending them on a mission that gets them secluded in a cottage on a snowy mountainside in the middle of nowhere."

They observe the plane door opening, the built-in ladder descending to reveal the two agents standing in the plane’s cabin in their worn suits.

“Exactly. This way, one day, I’ll dangle the information over their heads and garner myself a favour when I need it.”

“I suppose you do have a point.”

A smiling Harry follows Eggsy down the steps, their hands catching and holding as they make their way to the main building for debriefing.

“Well,” Merlin says quietly, “I think we did quite well.”

“Yes,” Lancelot agrees, her lips curling up into a pleased smile. “I think our work here is done."


End file.
